Language Evolution and Computation Bibliography

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Journal :: Language and Communication
2002
Language and Communication 22(2):131-158, 2002
On various modern accounts, human language or some of its features evolved like the vertebrate eye by natural selection. The present article offers a critical appraisal of the way in which this idea is articulated in Pinker and Bloom's (1990) selectionist account of language ...MORE ⇓
On various modern accounts, human language or some of its features evolved like the vertebrate eye by natural selection. The present article offers a critical appraisal of the way in which this idea is articulated in Pinker and Bloom's (1990) selectionist account of language evolution--the most sophisticated account of its kind. It is argued that this account is less than insightful since it fails to draw some of the conceptual distinctions that are central to a certain requirement for such selectionist accounts. The requirement states that language can be accorded the evolutionary status of an adaptation by natural selection if it exhibits complex adaptive design for some evolutionary significant function.
1998
Language and Communication 18(1):47-67, 1998
Much of the recent work on protolanguage has assumed that it contained a limited number of referential words in short sequences. However, there are good reasons for considering the possibility that it consisted of holistic utterances which performed two types of ...
1991
Language and Communication 11(1-2):3-28, 1991
It is necessary to relate functional explanations to the whole issue of innateness, which has been so crucial in the development of formal explanations in linguistics. For instance, it is not excluded that functional principles might be innate.... This raises the interesting ...MORE ⇓
It is necessary to relate functional explanations to the whole issue of innateness, which has been so crucial in the development of formal explanations in linguistics. For instance, it is not excluded that functional principles might be innate.... This raises the interesting question of how innate ideas turn out to be `correct' (more accurately, functionally valuable) ideas, as the result of selectional pressure in evolution. (Comrie, 1983, p. 99.)
Language and Communication 11(1-2):37-39, 1991
Abstract 1. Comments on FJ Newmeyer's (see record 1991-23770-001) article on language origins and evolutionary plausibility. Although Newmeyer endorses the view that language is rooted in prior representational (REP) rather than prior communicative (COM) systems, ...
Language and Communication 11(1-2):63-65, 1991
Abstract 1. Comments on FJ Newmeyer's (see record 1991-23770-001) stance that human linguistic ability derives from Darwinian processes that account for other aspects of human uniqueness. This is quite close to one of the major premises of P. Lieberman's (in press) ...